Adam Austin hasn't spoken to his brother in years. When they were teenagers, their sister was abducted and murdered, and their devastated family never recovered. Now Adam keeps to himself, scraping by as a bail bondsman. Kent Austin is the beloved coach of the local high school football team, a religious man and hero in the community. After years of near misses, Just before playoffs begin, the town and the team are thrown into shock when horrifically, impossibly, another teenage girl is found murdered.

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Publisher's Summary

Adam Austin hasn't spoken to his brother in years. When they were teenagers, their sister was abducted and murdered, and their devastated family never recovered. Now Adam keeps to himself, scraping by as a bail bondsman, working so close to the town's criminal fringes that he sometimes seems a part of them.

Kent Austin is the beloved coach of the local high school football team, a religious man and hero in the community. After years of near misses, Kent's team has a shot at the state championship, a welcome point of pride in a town that has had its share of hardships.

Just before playoffs begin, the town and the team are thrown into shock when horrifically, impossibly, another teenage girl is found murdered. When details emerge that connect the crime to the Austin brothers, the two are forced to unite to stop a killer - and to confront their buried rage and grief before history repeats itself again.

Michael Koryta, long hailed as one of the best young thriller writers at work today, has written his greatest novel ever - an emotionally harrowing, unstoppably suspenseful novel that proves why Michael Connelly has named him "one of the best of the best".

Koryta does not write easy books, especially his non-Lincoln Perry books. Characters are complex, flawed and often just wrong. But they are written just right. Adam and Kent Austin are brothers who have spent 22 years trying to cope with the tragic murder of their sister in their own ways - and have become estranged in the process. Then another similar murder occurs with the victim having the slenderest of connections to both brothers, and they are forced to confront each other and their past. They have to find out why the killer is using their past to manipulate the present.

Football plays a large role in this story - Kent is the high school coach, and there is a significant amount of time spent discussing games, strategy and players. If you have only a passing interest in football, or no interest, try to just get the gist of what is being said - the technicalities of the game are not critical to the narrative. But if you can see the game of football as an allegory for the lives of the two protagonists, you see how their approach to the game dictated their responses to the defining event in their lives, and how they will respond to the current crisis. As I write this I realize that football-as-life sounds like a cliche, but Koryta manages it with dexterity. The characters are not caricatures.

The mystery solving portion of the story is very real, each person behaving as they must, right or wrong. Mistakes are made that cannot be taken back, forcing new decisions on others. The suspense and foreboding mount, leading to the inevitable conclusion. Koryta has added yet another heroic antihero to his list. I swallowed this book almost whole - sacrificing sleep, unwilling to let it go.

Go ahead -- get this book, listen and love it, check the box below that says this review was not helpful; I am obviously suffering from a major disconnect, and am just a hater, a buzz-kill loner on the opposite side of better qualified reviewers, publishers, and award-winning authors cheering for this book: Kirkus, James Patterson, Dennis Lehane, Dean Koontz, Michael Connelly, and Stephen King. But, before I stand and face head-on the torrent of rotten tomatoes and cabbages sure to be lobbed in my direction, I feel that just making it all the way to the goal posts on this one earned me the right to say my piece... One more confession -- I am not a fan of football and have never seen one episode of Friday Night Lights (no throwing before I finish), though I do like a yearly game of fall college football.

This book is largely about football with a murder mystery that darts in and out of a small community high school's football season -- gives the term *go long* whole new meaning. The coach is a gentle God-fearing man, his brother a hard nosed bail bondsman; both were football players, both are haunted by the loss of their sister who was kidnapped and murdered while they were in high school. The brothers' diferences are played out much like two opposing teams on a field, each with different approaches, strengths, and weaknesses. The play by play goes back and forth between the opposition of the brothers, tracking down a copycat murderer, and taking back the state title--rah rah. (You love it already-non?)

This was my 3rd Koryta novel. In the previous novels I also struggled to stay in the zone for 3 reasons: 1) Koryta likes to layer the plots with *pink herrings*-- they don't actually mislead the reader, but they are usually not more than extraneous filler (like the pages upon pages of fourth quarter play options, or the cousin-of-the-offender's-girlfriend's-neighbor) instead of clever enjoyable diversions. 2) His characters are often only lighlty sketched psych cases that don't quite hit the point of being unique or fascinating psychopaths, and dwell more in the hazy realm of criminal deviants, and often overly cliched (overly cliched) personalities. 3) He also is a fan of *false endings,* that keep going on to a nicely-wrapped predictable ending, instead of the *I didn't see that one coming!* ending I think he is aiming for. The Koryta formula, I've experienced in 3 reads, adds up to an OK book...3*. Why only 2*? Because I was b o r e d; didn't really care about the characters; ridiculously predictable--figured it all out, even who would win the big game; couldn't buy into the plot; and even if it was a 3* up to the ending--the ending had me swimming in fondue...cheesy. So there you have it. Boo, hiss, and chuck those tomatoes. I'll understand, because that's the exact feeling I had when I finished this one. *Seriously, I think 99% will like this one--I am the 1%.

THE PROFET is a mystery that seems to say that everyone could reach a point in their lives that could cause them to be the villain that they feel they normally would condemn. I've read glowing reviews, and reviews that trash this book as being too much about football and not enough about a mystery. I think perhaps those one star reviews are missing something that make this book so much more than just a mystery. Will not say lots more on that because I believe the real discerning readers will be able to see this for themselves, and realize that this is a great mystery, but it is also a story that is so much more that JUST a mystery.

The Austin brothers live in the same small town where they were born and raised, but they have had virtually no contact with each other for 22years. Their relationship stopped one year when their sister was murdered. Both boys were football heroes, and Adam was supposed to drive his sister home from school every day. One day in his exuberance, he let his sister walk the five blocks home alone. She never made it home. Adam has been living in the guilt of his actions all of these years. Now as a bail bondsman, he lives a completely different live than his brother, Kent, more commonly known as "Coach".

As "Coach" is driving his high school football team to a state championship title, another 17 year old girl is brutally murdered. How the brothers handle this tragedy, and seek to solve and resolve this tragedy themselves, is what makes this a brilliant story.

If you’ve listened to books by Michael Koryta before, how does this one compare?

Not as good as his latest, "Those Who Wish Me Dead" which knocked me flat, but still a good read. Similar themes are evident: brotherly conflict and devotion; sacrifice; the trick of revealing character via a personal discipline. All are even better developed in the later work, but this is a heck of a good debut.

Any additional comments?

I'm no football fan myself, but I wasn't at all put off by the game descriptions, which serve to deepen our understanding of the main characters. In his lastt book he turns a similar trick using forest survival training. In both cases the author has researched the heck out of his subject, which I really appreciate. Will definitely read more of his work.

I completed The Ridge two days ago and was very disappointed (and wrote a negative review). As a big fan of Koryta's Lincoln Perry 4 book series, I did not wish to give up on this talented author. The Prophet did not disappoint! Character development was excellent. The story was superb. The Prophet is as good as the Lincoln Perry series, which is a high compliment.

This author and narrator matchup is nearly as good as the Burke/Patton duo. I was pleasantly surprised at the clean writing, the genuine capturing of two brothers' relationship, and a real depiction of small town life. I sorta forgot about the crime because I wanted to read about the characters' lives. I really cared about them.

Baseball is my game, but the thrill of high school football is truly depicted here and reading about Adam's last drive had me cheering. Just great writing.

There have been a few books over the last month that I didn't finish because I just got tired of prolonged and gross violence, the degradation and destruction of a human being. I wonder about the people who think this stuff up.

Koryta, on the other hand, writes a compelling story without a madman eating a child's heart still beating or people's heads on spikes. I cut my teeth on McKinty's trilogy so I'm no faint of heart pantywaist, but enough is enough. The lack of gore in The Prophet was because the story and writing was so stellar, the story so real, it didn't need to shock us.

I just ordered another title by Koryta and look forward to reading the rest. It's just unfortunate Brick reads a lot of them.

Here we are.. A good review!!!!! I may have stretched the 5 star rating out a bit - But it absolutely fluctuated between a 4 and a 5 throughout the book. If I compare it to the absolute crap I've come across lately - Then its a 5.

What to say - What to say... First - This book did have a lot of football talk > But not 90% as some (Mel) would lead you to believe. It was maybe 40% - 50% > but a lot of it was philosophical lessons and the characters in the story-line were part of the murder mystery, so there was a reason for it to be there. You don't have to be a football person to like or understand the small parts that were actually about football.

This was easily the best book I've listened to by Michael Koryta ... Better by a lot than "Those that wish me dead" and a billion times better than "The Ridge" > In my humble opinion. I'm tired of ridiculously unbelievable plot lines of mobs and ghosts.

This ending was great!!!!!!!!!! Not at all what I expected and I loved that.... I sit on the couch at night and guess the ending correctly 85% of the time in the who don-it shows. This book built up in speed as it went along, and ended with a powerful punch.

I found myself pushing the wrong button when it was done and started listening again.

The narrator was really good. He rocked this book... Better than that Brick guy...

Way too much football drama in a book that was intended as a murder mystery. The story never held my interest, but I stayed with it hoping there was going to be an ending that would intrigue me; no such luck.

The story itself was quite good. Have enjoyed the authors writing style. Robert Petkoff is an excellent narrator, and I recommend books that he's read. It was a worthwhile read. However, there was a morality and religion aspect that wasn't fully explored. The author clearly started out with intent to challenge the position of Faith, but did not follow up through the climax and resolution of the story. he touched on it, and then it just disappeared without explanation. Instead, more secular and pragmatic themes were explored, and they won out, although without examination.

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